


Reanimated

by historymiss



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Lovecraft AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1581809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He died. Or he didn't. Lovecraft AU where the Winter Soldier is an eldritch horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reanimated

Artyom closes his eyes. It makes little difference. The darkness is total, within and without. 

Six men had been on the research team.

He is the last alive.

Somewhere in the station, the Soldier is stalking him. He knows this, as he knows with utter certainty that the Soldier, whoever he is, is not human. Not any more. No man could move like that, through the shadows so fast that Kolya couldn’t even blink, couldn’t even scream before he choked on his own blood. No man had an arm like that, metal writing and bunching into muscles like snakes under silver skin.

There. A sound, on the edge of hearing. Ragged and wet, a groaning gasp as if the Soldier is unaccustomed to breathing air. He’s close.

Artyom is not a praying man. He’s seen too much to pray, but right now, he wishes he was. He’d known that the Red Rooms were… unusual. He’d known that the denizens of that place were not quite human. That the scientists there had strange beings on ice, things found out on the steppes, buried under the Siberian snow, things they grafted onto metal and flesh. 

He knows that valuable men, these days, don’t always die. But then, they don’t exactly survive, either.

He also knows, suddenly, sick dread pooling in his stomach, that the Winter Soldier wouldn’t make a sound unless he wanted to.

The breathing is close. And then it stops.

Artyom screams.

And then he dies.

Or he doesn’t.

(Bucky has scars. Steve sees them, round rings of dead white flesh that pucker across his back. They range from the size of a dime to circles as wide around as his fist.

"What happened?"

Bucky doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t like Steve to see the strange set of his eyes, his too-wide mouth.

"I died.")


End file.
